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Guilty as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 1) by Rosalind James (23)

 

 

There weren’t any hidden cameras at the store. That would have been too easy. Anyway, why would there be any connection between Jace’s stalker and Lily’s hater? The motivations were entirely different.

And all the same, when she’d gone to the grocery store, when she’d stretched and massaged her leg, had taken a long, hot bath and massaged it more, when she’d cooked dinner and eaten it alone, looking out the window at the looming mountain and trying not to think that it was waiting to crush her, she… needed some distraction.

She wondered what Lily was doing. She wondered what Jace was doing. She considered turning on the TV and watching Rafe Blackstone be sexy and charming. Instead, she downloaded his brother’s second book.

Which was seriously creepy. A kidnapped girl, not quite seventeen, the daughter of one of Sawyer’s buddies. A web of human traffickers moving the girl from place to place. And too many secrets, slowly revealed. Sawyer three steps, two steps, one step behind the kidnappers as the team fell around him one by one.

The breathtaking moment when Sawyer discovered that his friend wasn’t anything close to what he’d thought he was. That this was revenge, and it was going to be bad. Sawyer fighting on two fronts now, racing against time to get to the girl before she was sold. The scene cutting out to a girl with long blonde hair lying on her side on a metal bench, her hands bound in front of her, desperately picking at her bonds, then rubbing them against the bench’s support until her wrists bled while she listened to disembodied sobbing from the next cell.

Paige could taste the girl’s fear, and her resolve, too. She could smell Sawyer’s urgency, his crackling alertness to the cold air around him as he crept, one careful, silent foot at a time, through a metal air shaft on elbows and knees he’d padded with his clothing. His silence as he listened to voices on the other side of a panel, as he waited for his chance.

The voices faded. Sawyer shifted position. Slowly. Carefully.

Kick it open, Paige begged him. In another part of the building, the girl heard footsteps approaching her cell. Go go go.

The phone rang in her hand.

She jumped six inches off the bed. The room was completely dark. It had to be after midnight. And she’d known even at the moment the phone had rung that it wasn’t Lily.

“Hello?” Her voice sounded breathy. Stupid. It was a book. She was a cop.

“Ms. Hollander, this is Secure Alarm Services. Did you accidentally activate the alarm on your property?”

“What?” It was a whisper. She was already off the bed, pulling her revolver out of the drawer, and was across the room and toward the walk-in closet. Away from the stairs.

“Your property on 115 North Main,” the woman said. “We have an alarm. Do you want us to alert the police?”

“Yes.” It was at the shop. Not here. Not at the house. And all the same, she disconnected, set the phone on the floor, got both hands on her weapon, and focused her senses.

The wind in the trees louder now, halfway between a hiss and a roar, masking anything else. No vibrations in the wooden floor, not that she could feel, but the cottage was solidly built. No car noise, or she’d have heard it, surely. She’d have seen the difference in light as the headlights swept across the yard, too.

Unless the person had parked on the road and walked up.

It was probably the wind blowing a branch against the door of the shop. Something like that. But all the same, she was still listening, wishing the door to the closet had a lock. Wishing the bedroom had a door.

There was one door that closed in the cottage. The bathroom. Paige grabbed a pair of leggings and some socks from the dresser and Lily’s one pair of athletic shoes from the floor, all with her left hand, her right one still holding the revolver. She inched the closet door open and crept around to the bathroom, where she slipped inside, shut and locked the door as quietly as possible, switched on the light, pulled off the short bottoms of her pj’s, and got herself dressed.

Navy-blue leggings. Athletic socks and shoes. And a too-skimpy pj top.

She could have gone back for a sweater. She didn’t. This felt wrong. Her Spidey Sense was tingling. She flipped off the bathroom light, waited for a count of 180 for her eyes to begin to adapt to the darkness, then unlocked the door and eased it slowly open.

Nothing.

She went through the door weapon first, then retraced her steps to the closet and picked up her phone. Still nothing. A stop for her purse, dropping the phone inside and slinging the bag over her shoulders, and she was down the stairs, hugging the railing, and picking up her keys from the table by the door.

No porch light to illuminate her for anybody waiting. No motion sensors on the driveway, though, either. Lily had felt safe. Paige knew there was no such thing.

In the car. Doors locked. Weapon in easy reach. Start it up.

Down the mountain.

 

 

Jace couldn’t sleep.

Insomnia was part of the deal, of course. But tonight, it was worse than ever. And he knew why. Because he’d been a bastard. That was part of the deal, too.

She’d told him she was damaged. She’d shown him she was damaged. And what had he said? That people who were damaged didn’t tell you about it.

An arsehole thing to say. When he’d kissed her, when he’d been tender, she’d been surprised. You couldn’t fake that. She wasn’t used to being treated with tenderness, and that told you something. That was wrong.

Now, he stood at the front window, held the curtain back with a hand, and looked out at the night. No stars visible, because the clouds covered the sky.

“Storm coming,” he told Tobias, who was on his dog bed, his head lifted, his eyes on Jace. “Soon.”

He saw the lightening in the sky first. Not the flash of lightning. The sweep of headlights illuminating the low clouds.

It was after one o’clock in the morning.

It was Lily’s car. Something was wrong.

He couldn’t have said why, but within thirty seconds, he had his shoes on and his dog in his truck, the engine going hard.

He had to push it to catch up, because she was flying, and she had more weight in the back of that vehicle than he did, could take the corners faster. He hit the straight stretch into town, saw the red flash of taillights ahead, and put his foot down.

He caught up to her about the same time he saw the red and blue lights in the distance. When she blew through a red light onto Main, he swore, slowed, and followed her on through. And when she was going 40 in a 25 zone, he kept up.

She hit the brakes hard and pulled to the curb fast, nose to nose with the police cruiser, its light bar working. He saw her outlined for a moment when she opened the door, and then she was out and running. Around the back of the patrol car, and the cop on the sidewalk was whirling, his hand going to the butt of his weapon.

Shit.